


between two points

by ironoxide



Category: True Detective
Genre: Drug Use, Hallucinations, M/M, kind of, selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-16 10:31:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1344244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironoxide/pseuds/ironoxide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crash is a part of Rust, now, and sometimes the line between them is so blurred that there isn't really a line at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	between two points

**Author's Note:**

> what the everloving heck is this. i don't know. does it even count as selfcest. what am i. who am i. what have i written. this is so weird please don't even take this seriously at all.
> 
> a fill for this [prompt](http://truedetectivekm.livejournal.com/566.html?thread=38454#t38454). someone should probably do a better fill of this because it's really cool and my fill is not cool at all.

_the shortest distance between two points / is the line from me to you_

between two points - the glitch mob ft. swan

* 

_be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave  
_ _me in this abyss, where i cannot find you! oh, god! it is unutterable!  
_ _i cannot live without my life! i cannot live without my soul!_

wuthering heights - emily brontë

* * *

 

He sniffs, hard.

So, Rust, he’s high, he’s wired, it’s been a while and he’s kind of just getting back into it, into the swing of things, and he’s planning ahead, because he works best when he has a plan. You know, do this, then that, then this, then stop. Then smoke, then piss, then eat, then this, then that, then smoke, then stop. Sometimes he makes time for thinking, most times he doesn’t.

It’s been a while since a lot of things. Since coke, since the powder burn on his nose and at the back of his throat, eyes stinging, dick half-hard, something unidentifiable coursing through him and singeing everything it touches, white-hot, like a thousand suns searing into his skin, down through his veins, his arteries, right to his heart, his veins, his brain. And it’s like he can see a map of his head projected around him, like he can see synapses forming, synapses fraying, like fucking mad cow disease, like encephalitis burning everything beyond use. And everything’s burning, but he’s cold, and he feels brittle and corporeal and like vapour twisting through the air all at the same time. It’s been a while since that feeling.

It’s been a while since he let himself relax, really, properly. Because life, for him, right now, in Louisiana, with Marty, and work, and this fucking case – it’s fraying him at the edges. Like a pair of torn jeans. He feels like someone’s ripped out all his weft threads, and he doesn’t really want them back. Sometimes Marty doesn’t drive, and Rust, he hates driving, because it’s like every second he’s just waiting for a truck to plough into the side of the car and crush his lungs in his chest – and he can’t decide whether it would be worse to drift into a coma, for Claire to pull up from Wherever-She-Is and sign the form and pull the plug (because he never did remove her as his emergency contact), or to be paralysed, to lose control of his legs, his arms, his neck, his fingers, his toes. To be trapped inside his own fucking body, inside his own fucking _head_.

But this, this feeling, the one where he’s everything and anything – he’s pretty much forgotten what it feels like to dread something. And that border, between acceptable and unacceptable, it’s like he’s blurring it with every line, with every fucking speck of coke. He doesn’t think _I probably shouldn’t do that_ , because he doesn’t have the fucking capacity to think that any more. God fucking damn it.

Plan. Right. He needs to get back in the saddle, get back on track, screw his head on. Screw it off, really.

He sniffs, hard.

Rust, he’s got a line right down the middle of his brain, like the Berlin Wall, and he feels like one of the poor fuckers in East Berlin crashing through to the West, and instead of rotary-dialler telephones and brown floral wallpaper he’s surrounded by adverts for Coca Cola and women with their tits out, and somewhere somebody’s tearing down a statue of Lenin, and capitalism tastes sweet and cloying like white chocolate.

He can see Crash, this concept, this construct, in his head, and Crash smells like leather and alcohol – he likes whiskey, and he likes bourbon, but he’ll drink fucking moonshine if it’s there – and he hasn’t shaved in a few days. Crash feeds on attention – he drinks it in, absorbs it through his skin – and he’s got four half-brothers and a little sister who died when she was thirteen, and that was probably his fault, and the only person he ever told got shot in the head back in ’93, which was probably his fault too. He misses meals, and he screws up his toes inside his boots when he’s pissed, and he’s an angry drunk, and he dropped out of school when he was sixteen to help his dad run a car repair business until he got picked up by a gang in a suburb he can’t for the fucking life of him remember the location of and started running drugs to get money to pay for an engagement ring for his girlfriend, until she left him for some quarterback jock with a name like Leroy, or Liam, or Frank. And Crash, he sits slouched, kind of sideways on chairs, and he wears dark denim jeans and heavy boots and he has his hair pushed back – not that he really cares what he looks like – and people, they’re always saying, You never see Crash without a cigarette.

Crash says, “You look like shit, pretty boy.”

Rust doesn’t know exactly when the Crash in the back of his mind sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. What he does know is that he’s thirsty, so he leans across for the bottle of he-can’t-even-remember-what and takes a swig, and passes it to Crash. Rust says, “ _Pretty boy_. ’S that supposed to mean?”

Crash knocks back the bottle, skulling most of it. He shrugs, screws the top back on and throws it across. It lands, light, in Rust’s lap. “Not supposed to mean anything. Statement of fact, cheekbones.” He looks around, oxymoronic eyes tired and alert at the same time. He says, “You got a girlfriend or something, Rusty? Your place actually looks lived in.”

“My partner.”

Crash’s eyebrow twitches up.

“Fuck you, man,” Rust says, and he sniffs, hard. “ _Work_ partner, you asshole.”

“Stop being so fuckin’ vague next time and I won’t jump to conclusions.” Crash, he stands up, and he walks slow and careful over to Rust’s bed – his mattress, but whatever, Rust doesn’t want to argue semantics – and falls back onto it like he’s just been shot, arms pointing outwards, feet together, Jesus Christ on the cross. “Well, this might be the most un-fuckin’-comfortable bed I’ve ever had the misfortune to lie on. Isn’t even a bed, now I think about it. Who the fuck sleeps on a mattress on the fuckin _floor_?”

Rust says, “Why are you even here.” It’s not a question, because he doesn’t really care. He waits for an answer anyway.

The air is swimming around him, and he can smell motor oil, and the sour tang of metal dances on his tongue, and Crash’s hands are on his shoulders, slipping down his back, fingers digging into his hips, and his voice is soft and close and heavy as he says, “You need to let yourself unwind, man.” And Rust can feel lips on his earlobe, but Crash’s voice is far away, and he’s saying, “Why don’t you just let go?”

Rust says, “I’m trying to.” Or maybe he thinks it, but either way, Crash hears, and he sits up on the bed and takes a long, heady drag from his cigarette.

He says, “Did I mention you look like shit? Because you do. Fuckin’ trashbags under your eyes. Skin looks like corrugated iron.”

“I’m workin’ a case. You gotta help me with that.” He looks down, looks up, anywhere but at Crash, and he says, “We got a lead. Connections with the Iron Crusaders. You gotta get back in there, talk to Ginger. Say you’re selling coke or something, I don’t fuckin’ know. You wanna make a deal with their meth cook.”

“In case you fuckin’ forgot, _hermano_ , I’m supposed to be dead,” and Crash, he’s standing so close that their noses are practically touching, and he’s saying, “because _you_ can’t handle the fuckin’ heat. Pussy.”

Rust is on autopilot – because he’s tired, and he feels like he’s spread himself too thin, and that’s making him angry – so really, it’s not his fault that the fist he swings in Crash’s direction hits nothing but the dust hanging filmy and ethereal in the air. Crash is laughing, condescending and loud, and Rust grits his teeth, turns away, but Crash is still there, blowing smoke into his face. He says something, and Rust isn’t listening because he can hear his blood pounding through his body and his brain is throbbing, and there’s a headache right above his left eyeball beating like a steel drum into his skull.

Crash says, “Hey. Pay attention, _baboso_.” And he takes a pull on his cigarette, and takes a drink, and Rust sniffs, hard. “Shit, I forgot how tragic you were.” He’s leaning with his back against the countertop, and he’s saying, “Something-something-something Marty something-something huh? Something Marty something-something partner something case. Something-something.”

And Rust, he’s trying to listen, he really is, he’s trying to focus his brain, to make it point in Crash’s direction and take notes, but it’s like when he’s sitting in the car and looking kind of somewhere in the distance except he’s not really looking at anything and he can’t make himself focus no matter how hard he tries, and eventually he’ll just give up when the migraine pops like a burst balloon, like a blister.

“Something-something-something-bullshit,” Crash is saying, and his voice is gravel crunching underfoot, fall leaves, brown and orange and red. “Something-something Marty something. Something Marty. Rust, you fuckin’ listening?”

Rust shakes his head, and he sniffs, hard. He drags the back of his hand across his nose, tips his head forward, and he can feel Crash’s hand pat him on the back – and it’s just a pat, so why does it feel condescending as fuck? Rust says, “You talk a lot of shit, Crash.”

Crash says, “Why the fuck are you putting up with this asshole?” He says, “Listen, man, this isn’t fuckin’ group therapy. Stop enabling the guy. You and me both know he doesn’t give a shit.”

And yeah, he does know, he knows Marty doesn’t give a shit, but it still kind of pricks at him funny, like a thorn, or a nettle brushing against his bare leg, and he’s fourteen years old threading through the crispy brush, cursing the one nettle that survived the snowstorm, and he says, “You tell Ginger you got coke to sell, ’cause we gotta find the meth cook. Reggie Ledoux. We gotta find the guy.”

Crash has wandering hands, wandering eyes, wandering lips. He’s not touchy, he doesn’t like to touch, but his hands wander. He doesn’t smile but his lips twist upwards. He’s almost a person, almost a fully formed, honest-to-fucking-god person, but not quite, because there are these things, these little things about him, they’re like contradictions but not quite, not really. Half a step away. And Crash, he’s like, “I mean, obviously, he cares about stuff. But you know him. You’ve known guys like him your whole fuckin’ life. Good ol’ dad, for one. Remember him, pretty boy? Remember dad?” And he drops his voice to this crass, booming baritone, and it sounds nothing like Rust’s dad, but he’s crunching through the brown-edged snow and the nettle sting is a bright swell of concentrated pain on his calf.

Crash is saying, “ _Now listen, kid, you gotta remember – you gotta remember, stay quiet, stay silent, you gotta stay silent, you gotta shh. You’re one god damn weird kid, you know that? Teachers sendin’ me letters – Rustin does not pay attention, Rustin does not apply himself, Rustin this, Rustin that, Rustin is a – what was it? – a ‘clever boy blinkered by his own sense of self-importance’. The hell does that mean, kid?”_

Rust says, “Shut the fuck up.” He says, “Shut up, Crash. Fucking listen to me.”

“You know what I mean? You’re not a fuckin’ idiot, man. You see it too. Marty, your dad. They’re the same. Y’know. Fuckin’ self-righteous assholes, think there’s nothing they can do that’s wrong in the eyes of God.” Crash leans close again, breath on the back of Rust’s neck, and his wandering hands wander wild wander free wander heavy and clumsy, and they twist in Rust’s shirt. “Playin’ fast and loose with a lady like Maggie. Pretty girl like her, huh. Something-something.” He’s saying, “Something-something-something Maggie. God damn something-something, you know what I mean?”

Rust screws his eyes shut, tries to hold his breath, and Crash is lingering too close for too long, and he can hear someone shifting, and there’s a pattern on the back of his eyelids like looking through a kaleidoscope, except it’s all brown and pink, and he holds his breath as long as he can take it and spurts it out, and Crash is saying something but it’s like an insistent, fading buzz at the back of his mind. Someone is clattering, moving, shoes on linoleum, sniffing. Rust sniffs, hard.

A voice. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you?”

Rust says, “Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off fuck off go away leave me alone.” He says it quick and fast and under his breath, and he sniffs, hard.

The voice says, “Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus Christ. Rust, fucking. Jesus. Rust, would you just. I mean. Can you even. What the fuck.”

Rust says, “Leave me alone.” He says, “I’ll talk to you later.” He says, “Okay.”

The voice – not Crash, not crisp enough, not heady enough, and Rust knows he’s fucked, because what the fuck, what the _fuck_ – says, “Okay. Jesus _Christ_.”

He and Marty, they never talk about this again.

Rust sniffs, hard.


End file.
